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Bayard Rustin and the Civil Rights Movement by Daniel Levine

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Bayard Rustin and the Civil Rights Movement by Daniel Levine Poverty & Race PRRAC POVERTY & RACE RESEARCH ACTION COUNCIL January/February 2009 Volume 18: Number 1 Bayard Rustin and the Civil Rights Movement by Daniel Levine Bayard Rustin is most remem- the story of a man finding out that child and adult, always included blacks bered as the organizer who made the moral crusades, no matter how righ- and whites. He was a superb student 1963 March on Washington happen. teous, are futile unless combined with in high school, a talented singer and He organized or did himself the day- actual power, political power. athlete. He went for a year or two to to-day grunt work like arranging Rustin came to the Civil Rights several colleges, but did not graduate transportation and renting facilities. He Movement from the international paci- from any. At City College of New also worked on grand plans and vision fist movement, where he had intimate York, he was, for about a year and a for that day. But he was much more knowledge and experience of non-vio- half, a member of the Young Com- than that. He had been one of the very lent direct action. As a member of the munist League, because the YCL op- few to adapt the theory and practice pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation posed American entry into World War of Non-Violent Direct Action (NVDA) (FOR) in the 1930s and 1940s, he ran II. Rustin was a pacifist who had joined to race relations in the United States. NVDA workshops all over the coun- the Society of Friends (the church of NVDA was created for quite different try, sometimes actually trying out the his great-grandmother) in 1936. When circumstances and was counter to method by challenging racism in de- Hitler attacked Russia and the Com- American traditional culture, so the partment stores or restaurants. munist Party abandoned pacifism, process was a slow one. After 1965, Throughout the Civil Rights Move- Rustin abandoned the Party. Rustin favored moving “From Protest ment, Bayard Rustin was always there. He would not serve in the military to Politics,” the title of his most fa- He was there in the 1940s, when the nor co-operate in any way with Selec- mous article. He was always an inte- struggle for black equality seemed dis- tive Service, although in later years grationist who stood strongly against couragingly small. He was there as the he said that if he had known about the ideas of separatism or black national- movement accelerated in the 1950s. Holocaust, he would have served in ism. He tried, and only partly suc- He was with King in Montgomery and some non-combat capacity. In the ceeded, to unite the labor movement with the students when they revital- 1940s, he and other “non-cooperators” with the drive for racial justice, be- ized the movement in the 1960s. When went to prison. Bayard Rustin was a cause he believed both were primarily he was not physically at the center, difficult prisoner. He was constantly issues of economic class. His is also people who were would be constantly challenging racial segregation, and he on the telephone with him. (Please turn to page 2) Daniel Levine (dlevine@bowdoin. edu) is Professor of History Emeritus at Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Rustin’s Background CONTENTS: Maine, where he has taught since 1963. He drew this article from his Rustin was born in 1912 in West Bayard Rustin ............. 1 2000 book, Bayard Rustin and the Chester, Pennsylvania, but lived most Fair Housing Commn. 3 Civil Rights Movement (Rutgers of his life in New York, only briefly Freedom Budget ......... 9 Univ. Press). Among his other books in Harlem. Since his mother was only Apology/Reparations 10 16 and unmarried when he was born, is Poverty and Society: The Growth PRRAC Update .......... 11 of the American Welfare State in In- he was raised by his grandparents, Resources ................. 12 ternational Comparison. (Rutgers whom he always thought of as “ma Univ. Press, 1988). and pa.” His circle of friends, as a Poverty & Race Research Action Council • 1015 15th Street NW • Suite 400 • Washington, DC 20005 202/906-8023 • FAX: 202/842-2885 • E-mail: [email protected] • www.prrac.org Recycled Paper (RUSTIN: Continued from page 1) but in the border states. There was a NAACP was there, and FOR sent bit of violence in Chapel Hill, North Houser and Rustin. The latter two drew was an active homosexual. He had dis- Carolina. Bayard and others were ar- up a sensible practical proposal for the covered his homosexuality as a teen- rested, and the Journey went on, but Cicero Committee of the Chicago ager, and was for decades tortured no further south than Tennessee, then Council Against Racial and Religious about it. He considered homosexual- back to Washington. If Rustin, Houser Discrimination, a private group, say- ity wrong, in religious terms, a sin. and the others hoped to bring segrega- ing that mob violence must not be al- In prison, he was punished for it by tion to national attention, they failed. lowed to prevail. The proposal was isolation. His isolation was in the The Journey was only noticed by the ignored, and the black family felt they prison library, which in fact was a Afro-American press, but it became had to move out. Mob violence pre- wonderful opportunity, given his pas- the model for the “Freedom Rides” of vailed. Later, however, the police sion for learning. In 1945, Rustin and 1961 chief and several town officials were other pacifists were stunned by news Rustin’s trial was a year later. Af- convicted under federal law for not of the atomic bomb. They felt that all ter a 15-minute deliberation, he and doing their duty. other crusades had to be suspended in another rider were convicted and given NVDA had failed on the Journey the face of this threat to all life. He a sentence of 30 days on a chain gang. of Reconciliation, but the threat of became a model prisoner, and was re- The verdict was of course appealed. civil disobedience succeeded in the leased in March of 1947. campaign to end segregation in the The half dozen years after his re- Rustin made the 1963 military. NVDA had failed in Cicero, lease were ones of whirlwind activity. March on Washington but eventually there was progress with He moved into an apartment on Mott happen. federal help. Rustin was gradually Street in New York City, a building coming to the conclusion that NVDA filled with reformers and activists. He needed the aid of political power to began talking with George Houser, Also in 1947, Rustin ran, and A. make any progress. who was also thinking about how Philip Randolph chaired, a “League NVDA had been developed in an NVDA could be applied to race rela- for Nonviolent Civil Disobedience anti-colonial campaign. Perhaps it tions, about a “Journey of Reconcilia- Against Military Segregation.” In could be further developed in other tion,” a bus trip through the segregated March of 1948, President Truman met anti-colonial battles, perhaps Africa. South by an interracial group. The with a number of “Negro” leaders, in- In 1952, under the auspices of the Supreme Court had outlawed segre- cluding Randolph, and issued a some- American Friends Service Committee gation on interstate travel in 1946, but what ambiguous order desegregating (AFSC) and FOR, Bayard attended the decision was not enforced. A the military. Randolph thought the or- another world peace conference in “Journey of Reconciliation” would der was adequate, and the League dis- England, then a quick stop in Paris, challenge state segregation laws and banded. then to Africa, particularly the Gold perhaps bring the whole question of While the appeal of his North Coast (later renamed Ghana), to meet segregation to national attention. The Carolina conviction was going on, Kwame Nkrumah and other African Journey began in Washington in April Rustin traveled to India, via London, leaders. But it would be hard to find of 1947, going not into the deep South, to a world peace conference. This was any effect on the anti-colonial process the first of many trips to London, and from the American NVDA effort. he developed an English accent, which Rustin returned to the United States Poverty and Race (ISSN 1075-3591) he could turn off and on. When and and resumed his writing and lecturing is published six times a year by the Poverty & Race Research Action Coun- why he spoke with that accent is not all over the country. He was by now cil, 1015 15th Street NW, Suite 400, clear. In India, Rustin traveled and the leading theorist and practitioner of Washington, DC 20005, 202/906- spoke widely, becoming a much ad- Non-Violent Direct Action in the coun- 8023, fax: 202/842-2885, E-mail: mired figure, and met the major In- try, was in fact “Mr. NVDA.” He was [email protected]. Chester Hartman, dian leaders. A few weeks later, he an obvious choice for a leadership po- Editor. Subscriptions are $25/year, was on the chain gang in North Caro- sition in FOR or some organization in $45/two years. Foreign postage extra. lina. He served, with “good time,” the growing Civil Rights Movement. Articles, article suggestions, letters and general comments are welcome, as are 22 days. His account of those days, as Then he was arrested in Los Ange- notices of publications, conferences, reported in the New York Post, Au- les, not for any pacifist or civil rights job openings, etc. for our Resources gust 22-26, 1949, was one factor activity, but on a “morals” (that is, Section.
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